free to drive by the cemetery all night long, or even park next to the cemetery and look inside from outside the gates.
NAPERVILLE CEMETERY
705 South Washington Street, Naperville, Illinois 60540
directions
From the center of Chicago, take I-290 West for a little more than 13.5 miles to I-88 West. Follow I-88 West for 7.5 miles to I-355 South. Take I-355 South for a little more than 3 miles and take the Maple Avenue exit. Keep right on the exit and merge onto Maple Avenue toward Naperville. Follow this road for almost 5 miles and turn left onto Washington Street. The cemetery will be on your right.
history
Whenever the words “ghost” and “Naperville Cemetery” are mentioned in the same sentence, locals immediately say the name Hillegas. Charles Hillegas and his wife (either Sarah or Jessie) were by all accounts incredibly happy together. Unfortunately, though, in the midst of this happiness, tragedy struck. Mrs. Hillegas fell ill and died. Here is where the two accounts of the story begin to diverge.
One account of the story states that she died in 1898. The other states that she died of influenza in 1912. Either way, Charles was heartbroken and had her body buried in Naperville Cemetery. It is here that the story becomes even darker.
According to one version of the story—the version printed the next week in the local newspaper—Charles began screaming that she was still alive as the casket was being lowered into the ground. Charles’s concerned friends took him home and kept careful watch over him. A week after the body had been buried, he managed to slip away to the cemetery. He dug up the remains of his wife and took her home. His friends attempted to talk sense into him, but Charles armed himself and hid out in his barn to protect his wife’s remains. Eventually, the sheriff captured him. His wife was returned to the cemetery, and he was sent to a mental institution.
While the above version of the story is what was reported in the local papers at the time, most people in Naperville know a different version of the story. Charles was an amateur chemist and, after the loss of his wife, he worked to develop a ‘potion’ to bring her back from the dead. Years after her burial, he felt that he had succeeded and went to the cemetery and dug up his wife. He gave her the formula.
The story goes on to say that he lived in his house with the corpse of his wife for two weeks before someone found out.
ghost story
Mr. and Mrs. Hillegas are buried in Naperville Cemetery. Perhaps they are one of the reasons for the plethora of ghosts that have been seen in the cemetery. The most often-seen ghosts take the form of glowing orbs of light. The orbs can be any variety of colors and sometimes even blink on and off. The blinking orbs have been seen so often that they have gained the nickname, “the hide-and-go-seek lights.”
Beyond the lights, there are several apparitions that are seen throughout the cemetery. People sometimes see an old woman in the cemetery who disappears when approached. When it snows, people sometimes see the apparition of an older woman walking barefoot through the snow. Sometimes, people who enter the cemetery find bare footprints in the fresh snow and question why anyone would walk in the freezing snow in their bare feet.
Another menacing figure who is seen throughout the cemetery is known as the “shadow man.” Many people see an imposing shadowy figure of a man who instantly vanishes upon being sighted.
visiting
The cemetery is open 9 a.m.–5 p.m. daily. This means that while you can enter the cemetery and search for the apparitions during the day, you will have to search the cemetery from outside the gates to watch for the hide-and-go-seek lights at night. The best time to search for the old woman apparition is early in the morning after a fresh snow has fallen the night before.
OAK HILL CEMETERY AND THE DEMON BUTCHER
8928 West 131st Street, Palos Park, Illinois 60464
directions
From the center of Chicago, take I-55 South for a little more than 13.5 miles to Exit 279 A-B towards La Grange Road. Take US-45 by taking the ramp on the left and follow this for a little more than 8.5 miles. Turn left onto West 131st Street and follow it for about 1 mile. The cemetery will be on your right.
history
In 1892 and 1893, as the World’s Fair arrived in Chicago, some people opted to leave the increasingly crowded inner city and move to quieter, outlying areas. Particularly, a man named Hermann Butcher decided to move his butcher shop to the suburb of Palos Park in 1892.
For a few years, he ran his butcher shop successfully, but when The Great Depression hit, his business was affected. Despite his increasing troubles, he was the only butcher shop in town to stay open during the Depression. Butcher employed a young apprentice who everyone in town knew that he treated poorly. He would yell at the young man often and would overwork him constantly. One day, as the apprentice was carrying a load of meat down into the freezer, he fell and broke his neck.
Butcher, knowing that the town knew how he treated his apprentice, decided to hide the body in his freezer. Soon, people missed the apprentice around town. Butcher denied having seen him but knew that he had to get rid of the body. One day, as the meat was running short, he carved the leg of his apprentice and cooked and tasted it. He decided that it could pass for beef and displayed it in his shop. The town not only bought the entirety of the apprentice’s ‘meat,’ but they came back begging for more.
Butcher decided that he had to provide for the town, so he would find hobos and small children in the area to lure back to his house to kill and butcher. Eventually, the townspeople began to suspect that he was to blame for the children who had gone missing in the area. They stormed the butcher shop and found a half-butchered 7-year-old in the basement. They then stormed Hermann Butcher’s house and drug him out to the front lawn where they hacked him to death with his own butcher knives.
They cut off his head and buried it on Indian Hill. The rest of his body was later buried across the street at Oak Hill Cemetery.
ghost story
On Indian Hill there currently stands a preschool. Some people at the preschool report hearing what sounds like the clanging of knives from time to time within and around the school grounds.
The more famous ghost story in this area, though, is actually in some ways verifiable. The story goes that the demon butcher’s body is attempting to reconnect with its head. The stories suggest that the grave of Hermann Butcher is actually moving toward Indian Hill, where his head is buried. This is actually documented and provable. The headstone itself is slowly creeping, year by year, across the cemetery grounds toward Indian Hill, which is across 131st Street
